Joint Effort
by triquetral
Summary: One shot: Dean's is injured after a hunt. Sam is driving. Brotherliness ensues.


**Disclaimer:** Don't own the boys. Mo's the pity.

* * *

"Put it back in."

"What?" Sam tries to keep an eye on the stormy roads while he flicks a glance over to Dean.

"Nothing," Dean mumbles, offering nothing in the way of explanation.

Sam knows his brother was nursing an injury after this last hunt, but Dean swore nothing was bleeding or broken. Said that he just wanted to get out of the fucking rain, which Sam was more than happy to do himself. Triage could wait until they were out of soaking wet clothes. Right now, Sam can barely spare a thought to that. These back roads are rough gravel at the best of times, but with the sudden downturn in weather it was not the best time to be in an area that seemed to have 'flash flood' warning signs posted every couple hundred feet. So he doesn't try to pry more info out of Dean like maybe he would normally, just peers out into the darkness trying to will his eyes to see beyond the sheet of rain that seemed to be coming down right in front of the high beams.

It takes maybe ten more signs of them inching along and a particularly bumpy stretch of road before Dean speaks up again.

"Pull the car over."

Sam's almost ready to criticize Dean that even if the undercarriage did scrape anything on that last bump, they're not stopping to check in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a flood zone. There's something in Dean's voice that stops him, though. "Why?"

"Just pull the car over and pop my shoulder back in."

Ah. So that's what was wrong. "Can't it wait?"

"Gee, Sam, do you really think I'd be asking if I thought it could?"

And yeah, Dean wouldn't be. "I know, man, but do you remember the last time I had to fix it while we were inside the car?"

"Oh."

"Yeah." In a relatively small space for two large guys, Sam hadn't had the leverage he needed. The whole operation was screwed to hell and Dean only narrowly avoided needing surgery, instead spending the next few weeks trussed up with his arm immobilized to his chest. He was only mildly surprised Dean didn't remember. Sam had his own one-time experience with his shoulder being torn out of its socket, and he vaguely remembered the pain, how every ligament and tendon being stretched out too far sent shooting pain right up to his scalp. He can see why Dean would be focusing on the pain that was plaguing him now and not some distant memory that happened five or six dislocations ago.

"We'll get back to the motel and do it there, okay? I think we'll hit the main road in a few miles." In most other situations, if it was a biblical-style downpour they were in, they'd just pull over for awhile and wait it out. There was no good place out here, though. And one of them was hurt. "I just want to get us off these roads."

"Okay, but fair warning, if you hit one more of those giant craters, I'm liable to tear my own arm off and beat your ass with it."

A few miles turns out to be an underestimation, or at least that's how it feels when Sam can't safely drive the car over 20mph.

There's truncated conversation that Sam attempts to make along the way.

"The right one?"

Dean just grunts his response, because - yeah, it was almost always the right shoulder.

"You want some Advil?"

"You wanna open the child-lock for me while I steer one handed in this weather, be my guest." It was the grim note in Dean's voice that makes Sam believe that what his brother is _really_ saying is that if this car isn't stopping to put his shoulder back into place, it better not be stopping at all.

"I dunno, you've done pretty well before," Sam tries to lightly joke. "Remember that time-"

"-Y'know, Sam, if you're trying to take my mind off my shoulder I have a pro-tip for you - stop mentioning it."

Sam scowls slightly, because he's only trying to help, and even if Dean does have a point, he doesn't have to be a dick. He doesn't take it too personally, considering the situation, but he's not going to take it lying down either. "Maybe if you'd mentioned it before we'd gotten in the car, I could have fixed it right then."

There's silence from the passenger side of the car for a few beats.

"Equally valid."

Just like that, they're back to mostly companionable silence, if still an irritated one.

They're nearing the main road when the path suddenly takes a turn for the worse, and every bump that jostles Dean around in his seat seems to bring an inhalation of air in through his clenched teeth.

"Sorry."

Dean gives him no response, instead trying to momentarily hold his breath. As if that was going to fool anyone.

The car pulls over to the rocky shoulder..

"You said doing it in the car is a bad idea. Just keep going."

"So we'll do it outside."

Dean stares at Sam as if he's suddenly gone crazy. "Dude, in a fucking monsoon? With no street lights?"

"Good thing we have headlights. Besides, dude, I think I could do this blindfolded by now."

It figures that now, when Sam is offering to do it, Dean is digging his heels in. "Aren't we still in the flood zone?"

Sam opens his door and gets out, leaning back inside, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the pounding rain. "Yep, and now I'm standing in it. So you can either get out, join me for a minute, and we can be on our way, or you can waste time arguing."

The mutinous glare Dean gives him tells Sam everything he needs to know about how underhanded and unfair his brother thinks his tactics are. Regardless, it gets Dean out of the car faster than Sam would have thought possible, and they meet around the front of the car, the high beams making silhouettes of the only two bastards stubborn and crazy enough to be standing outside tonight.

There's no exchanging of niceties. As soon as Sam is sure both he and Dean have their bearings on the gravel, his hands find their practiced way toward getting the injured arm into position. And without any counting, or 'ready, sets', Sam pushes up hard on the joint and shoves it back into place.

Dean's yell is almost primal into the darkness, with a long string of curse words that are lost on Sam's ears as they both head hurriedly back to the car, water dripping off them with renewed vigor.

As the car pulls out of park, Dean turns to look at him, face still strained with pain, but it's receding, that much is obvious from how pissed he looks - as if the relief he's getting is giving him room for anger.

"Sam, if you ever pull a dumbass fucking stunt like that again-"

"-Man, it's been a long night," Sam interrupts, chuckling wearily. "Can we just get back to the motel without making it longer? I didn't even think we were in the flood zone anymore, it was just the quickest way to get you out of the car."

For a moment, Sam's not sure if that makes it better or worse, but after a moment of intensely narrowed eyes, Dean simply opens up the glove compartment and pulls out the Advil, working off the cap with a wince. "Congratulations, Sammy, you've earned the right to be my little organ grinder monkey tonight. You will bring me ice packs, and the remote, and fluff my pillows, and whatever hell else I want."

"...your little organ?" Sam can't help bursting out laughing.

"Shuddup, ape."

_the end_


End file.
